Peerless in Seattle

David Bonetti, EXAMINER ART CRITIC

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, March 18, 1999

SEATTLE - Among contemporary art collectors, Virginia and Bagley Wright have achieved an enviable reputation for intelligence, community responsibility and good taste. Of course, part of the widespread approbation the Wrights enjoy stems from the fact that they reside in Seattle, far from the corridors of art-world power (and gossip), where they have been able to pursue their collecting activity without constant scrutiny. The current exhibition celebrating them and the collection they have assembled over a 45-year period (at the Seattle Art Museum through May 9) demonstrates, however, that the universal praise they and their collection receive is well-merited.

At first glance, the collection seems a rather impersonal survey of artmaking in the United States from the late 1940s to thepresent, with the late entry of German art in the '80s. Abstract expressionism, minimalism, Pop, color field painting, neo-expressionism and post-modern irony and criticality all make appearances, frequently with excellent examples of work by major artists. The installation, overseen by SAM curator Trevor Fairbrother, eschews chronological display for a spicier arrangement based on theme and affinity. (The small addendum that inaugurates the Wrights' private exhibition space in a renovated warehouse on the edge of Seattle's downtown follows a similar pattern.)

First appearances are, however, frequently incorrect, and although the collection intentionally reflects postwar art trends - the Wrights plan for it eventually to form the core of SAM's permanent collection of late 20th century art - it is far from impersonal. This is not a cookie-cutter collection assembled overnight by socially ambitious arrivistes who use an expensive art collection as their best chance of breaching society's walls; it is one that reflects a personal sensibility actively engaged with the art and ideas of our time.

From the start, the Wrights have purchased new work by young artists. Although they have on occasion bought work as ancient as 25 years old in order to plug a gap, correct an oversight or help undo a regretted sale - under the influence of formalist pooh-bah Clement Greenberg, they sold a number of Pop classics in the '70s - they generally avoid second-guessing their own original instincts.

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"The Wrights' main strategy behind the collection is to buy work by promising artists when it is most affordable," Fairbrother writes in his catalog essay.

"This proved successful from an investment perspective, and has produced a rich assembly that spans many artistic styles and several generations of artists."

Not that the Wrights, people of means who have dominated Seattle society since the 1950s, had to economize. On both sides, Virginia Bloedel Wright comes from families enriched by timber fortunes. After stints as a journalist, Bagley Wright made his own in real estate. His firm built the Space Needle that symbolized the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and still dominates the city's skyline.

In the early '50s, the Wrights, bright and intellectually engaged 20-year olds, met in New York City, where both were exploring their interests. Virginia had studied art history at Columbia and was working for Sidney Janis, the dealer whose gallery showed Picasso, Leger, Mondrian and young Americans like Jackson Pollock. It was a culturally heady time, and in a charming memoir written for the catalog, Bagley brings the period to life.

Janis was the greatest influence on Virginia's collecting philosophy. From him she learned to purchase only works by artists who had begun to attract serious critical attention and who had begun to perform on the art market, and to choose the best available example of the work.

Putting that philosophy into action, the 23-year old Virginia purchased Mark Rothko's "Number 10" in 1952, the year it was painted. A classic in Rothko's development of his signature style of floating clouds of color in a vague, unspecified space, it set the pattern for future acquisitions. Soon, she bought new paintings by Joseph Albers, Willem de Kooning and Northwest painters Mark Tobey and Morris Graves. In 1955, the newly married couple was featured in a national magazine article written by Sam Hunter on a surprising new area of collecting: contemporary art.

After their marriage, the Wrights relocated to Seattle, where they quickly became engaged with what was then a provincial art scene, loaning works, organizing exhibitions, funding works of public sculpture. Through the years, by action and example, they helped transform what was a pioneer town with little interest in culture into a more sophisticated city where art, theater and opera flourish.

Their collection, some 250 works in all mediums, about 100 of which are on view in the two venues, will give SAM one of the most well-balanced assemblages of postwar American art of any West Coast museum. Because of their philosophy, it represents artists at the moment of their breakthroughs. There are few experimental early works or late flowerings, but rather, good examples of painting and sculpture by artists in the full flush of early maturity.

In each collecting area, there are outstanding works. Among the abstract expressionist paintings, along with the legendary Rothko, there is a fine early abstract Philip Guston, all nervous markmaking in characteristic shades of pink and gray; two early de Koonings, including one harridan from his Woman series with red-tipped nails (blood or nail polish?); and a characteristic Franz Kline, black slashes across a white field.

The Johns and Rauschenberg, both bought soon after they were made, represent the artists just after they found their voices. Johns' "Thermometer" (1959) is a classic in which the artist is already making fun of his famous coolness: A massive thermometer runs between two panels of a painting misleadingly painted with "hot" abstract expressionist strokes, turned glacial in Johns' hands. Raushchenberg's "Octave" (1960), although not his finest combine-painting, represents well enough his ability to turn dross to gold.

The fact that color field painting, Greenberg's favored movement, is at the heart of the Wrights' collection is recognized by a veritable temple of formalism installed at the exhibition's deepest point. A Morris Louis

"Unfurled" (1961), its unprimed canvas unfortunately yellowing, is the main altarpiece. Forming side altars are the famous Rothko, color field painting's major source, and an expansive Helen Frankenthaler.

But Fairbrother has slyly created another, more secular chapel parallel to it that represents the Wrights' lively engagement with the most recent art. Jeff Koons' "St. John the Baptist" (1988), a kitschification of Leonardo's cloying painting of the androgynous saint, cast larger than life in porcelain, clutches a pig and a penguin and points seductively upward. There, in a flickering spotlight, is a 1994 sign work by Jack Pierson. Like the older (by 35 years) Rauschenberg made from objects salvaged from the streets, it spells out in grunged letters the name of a secular saint of our time (and a Seattle native): Kurt Cobain.&lt;